Yes, using patents.

They got lucky and a handful of their early patents became required parts of early cellular standards. Since then they've lobbied the standards bodies to include features that require their newest patents. When that fails, because the mobile manufacturers are tired of Qualcomm's monopoly, they simply buy up more patents to make up the difference.

That is just so far from truth. The reality is no one manage to compete with them even when 5G had significant tech not derived from Qualcomm. And yet they still had the best Modem.

Yet, very remarkable given that they were nearly stomped out of the market around 2010-2012 by previously "no-name" SoC makers, making cookie cutter SoCs cheap, fast, and selling by tons.

Yet, they recovered, and clawed back their way to the top, with only MediaTek now threatening them.

I don't expect MediaTek to be as inept, and Pavlovian if Qualcomm will ever come to them with a deal, as they did with Allwinner 8 years ago (Allwinner gave up on mobile market, and Qualcomm gave them an obscene cut from their low-end Snapdragons in return.)

And knowing Taiwanese, they simply don't sell companies owners spent their life working on. Very ego driven business culture.

Mediatek has 31% market share of the smartphone SOC market, and Qualcomm 29%.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/mediatek-biggest-smartp...

I think that must be in units, not dollars. Qualcomm chipsets are nearly universal on the higher end.

Not having looked at it at all, I think so too. But the trajectory of them overtaking Qcom is interesting either way.

this would help explain why all winner was on a roll making pretty great chips and has shipped absolutely worthless tripe for! he past 5 years. re-spins of rhe same shit they had been making. the chip making game feels so diseased.